Spain

Spain’s wine heritage is at least three thousand years old; vineyards in today’s Sherry region were planted by the Phoenicians around 1,100 BC. Wines from vines grown along the sunny Mediterranean coast and the cooler Atlantic coast were traded and consumed by the Romans.

With the limited exception of Sherry, only Rioja enjoyed much international awareness until the late twentieth century. Wealthy producers such as the Marqués de Riscal, Marqués de Murrieta and Vega Sicilia had the wherewithal to produce wines that brought international attention, but Spain mostly operated under the radar, ruled as it was by a military dictatorship until the mid – 1970s.

Spanish wine has kept pace by generating an explosion of new wines, wineries, brands, and regions – these developments are unprecedented in vinous history. While wine has underpinned commerce and nutrition in Spain for thousands of years, what we are seeing today is something that no other country has ever experienced: a compressed revolution in which pedestrian, paint-by-numbers wine is developed into great art. It’s as if the last century of wine development in the most successful wine-producing countries has been achieved in only a few short years.

(Taken from "A brief history" of Wines from Spain official site.)